


(drip) drop

by scorpionGrass



Series: you can’t put a price on peace (of mind) [6]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Sector 7 Plate Collapse, Wutai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 09:46:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18797878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpionGrass/pseuds/scorpionGrass
Summary: A girl sits in a bar, water in hand because the bartender saw right through her fake ID, listening to the crackling radio tell the world about Sector 7’s destruction.





	(drip) drop

A smart idea would have been to bring along her trunk full of disguises. A smart idea, except that she was travelling across the entire world to reach Midgar, a utopia of mako energy and materia. Or so the propaganda tells her.

Yuffie Kisaragi, White Rose of Wutai and ninja with a vengeance, knows much better than to believe that.

It’s too late for disguises anyway, and lugging them around would be a hassle (she tried, she gave up, she ran out of Wutai with nothing but a pack of rations, potions, and her trusty shuriken on her back). Instead, she smiles up at the bartender and hands him her fake ID.

He glances at her up and down and frowns. Hard. “If you need to take a load off, take a seat. But you’re not getting anything but water,” he says gruffly, handing the shoddy ID back to her.

Well, it was worth a try.

She sits in the corner of the bar, inconspicuous to the rest of the patrons, no doubt regulars from the upper sections of Junon. From the view through the dirty windows, she can see the sun beginning to set over the gigantic cannon that takes up the majority of Junon’s skyline. It’s a black splotch across the horizon, ugly with Shin-Ra’s branding all over it. Though, passing closer to the base earlier, she’s glad to know the citizens living here have already sprayed graffiti all over parts of it.

Watching the bartenders and stirring up her water with the straw, she realizes bars are the same no matter where you go. Depressing, filled with smoke, with patrons who want to forget. At least Junon wasn’t a tourist town, she thinks.

The radio crackles in the background, droning on about Shin-Ra energy, Chocobo breeding, and other various boring things that have nothing to do with anything Yuffie’s interested in.

Namely, materia and where the hell she can steal it from.

Yuffie finds herself craving green tea, the kind they always brewed back home in the Pagoda whenever she and Chekhov sparred. She doubts the bar would have any, but the homesickness is enough for her to get up and walk over to the bar again.

“What now, kid?”

She shrugs. “Got any tea?”

“What kind?”

“Green.”

“Lemme see what I can do.”

She sits at the bar, watching him shuffle through the shelves and find some tins of teabags in the back. The radio crackles louder before settling back into a white noise over the newsfeed it’s playing.

“Here you go,” the bartender says shortly, sliding a pint glass of hot green tea to her. “On the house, kid.”

“Thanks.”

She’s about to go back to her quiet little corner booth when the radio screeches out an alarm.

“ _ Breaking news! Midgar’s Sector 7 plate has just fallen and crushed the slum sector below, killing thousands of people. When asked for a quote from our media unit in Shin-Ra, the President only commented that ‘it was necessary.’ More on this tragedy to come as more information is released. _ ”

Yuffie’s only halfway off the barstool, hands clutching around the pint glass, stomach dropping to the ground and bile rising in her throat.

“So, Shin-Ra kills its own people too, huh?” she says quietly.

The bartender’s eyes slide over to her. “They don’t discriminate, no.”

She takes a deep breath. “Sounds like I’m heading into a dragon’s den.”

Yuffie takes her tea back to the corner booth and stares out of the bar’s window. The hour's pass, the dregs of her tea go cold, and she suddenly feels a lot smaller.

More updates come in bits and pieces. Some sources blame the explosions on an eco-terrorist group named AVALANCHE, but according to other sources the news station brings in, Sector 7 was the location of their home base. Why would anyone crush their own livelihood? Killing thousands in the process? No other comments came from the President, other than a voice clip that had him state “ _ this is a tragedy, and we keep the people of Sector 7 in our hearts _ ,” in a voice so devoid of emotion that Yuffie wonders if Shin-Ra really is run by robots with no regard for human life.

Yuffie watches the sun go down, an inky black night replacing it, almost hiding the Junon cannon. At some point, last call rings through the bar and she barely registers it. The lights dim, the customers file out with drunken gibberish escaping their mouths. The bartender slides into the other side of her booth.

“Wutai, huh?”

“What was the giveaway,” Yuffie asks dryly. “Was it my skin? Eyes? The shuriken?”

He nods approvingly. “You’re tough. You have guts coming into a bar like this, it’s not usually this quiet.”

Yuffie stares into the pint glass, at the powder swirling at the bottom. “I crossed two continents alone too, so there’s that.”

There’s a long pause and without the radio crackling its white noise through the bar, she can hear the slow mechanical whir of the ceiling fan above them.

“Don’t mess with Shin-Ra. You already know what happens when you do,” he says.

“We’re a tourist spot now. It could be worse. We could be the Northern Crater.”

The bartender grimaces. “That’s a possibility if you push it.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

He sighs, starting to get up. “There’s an inn upstairs if you need a place to stay for the night. Safer to travel in the day time.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

Yuffie watches him return behind the bar, washing up glasses and plates, the dishrack precariously full. It never crashes down though, no matter how many dishes he piles on top. It’s almost impressive, except chores are never impressive.

Finally, she gets up too. “Don’t forget this one,” she says, handing him back her pint glass.

He just nods.

The bell jingles above her head as she opens the door, and right as she’s stepping over the threshold, he speaks again.

“Wherever your vendetta takes you, be careful, Princess.”

The door clangs shut behind her before she can whip around in time, eyes wide.

(Godo had said much less when she left Wutai, drunken slurring that amounted to nothing intelligible.)

**Author's Note:**

> yuffie deserves a lot of credit for what she gets up to before she meets avalanche. and everything that happens after too.


End file.
